I feel like I can speak for most men when I say I am interested in the subject of sex.
Ok, sue me for being transparent 
But, outright telling everyone or even implying that I’m thinking about sex in the middle of the day may not be something I want to broadcast to my network on Facebook.
And this was EXACTLY the thought that crossed my mind when I saw an article via the Washington Post Social Reader app on Facebook the other day about men and their sex lives.
(I won’t link to it because I know all you guys out there will click over and never come back! )
The Problem of Opt-Out Social Sharing
And this is exactly the problem with the new wave of “social sharing” apps that seem to be exploding based on Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol.
Instead of actively sharing, we’re all going to be passively sharing. Simply by clicking on a link and reading an article or opening a page…your whole network will be informed about this action.
So, there are a few questions that come up in my mind.
- Do we want to do this?
For example, my friend, Mark is a serious guy. He’s passionate about social technologies, but is he damaging his brand by reading an article about “Blondes vs. Brunettes” (which could seem frivolous)? - Is it right for marketers to be doing this to us?
Over 10 years ago, Seth Godin’s seminal work, Permission Marketing, argued that our objective was to form relationships with a community based on anticipated and relevant information.
Whether you are Microsoft, Campbell’s Soup, or just a guy on Facebook, if you want to build a valuable brand, you need to earn attention (it’s an attention economy, after all) and one of the ways you do that (as I shared in the eBook-10 Ways to Grow Your Fans) is by curating valuable content for your audience.
You go through a haystack, find a needle, and share that needle.
Bang…I’m better off because you’ve done the legwork for me.
Now, however, it’s flipped…
and each of us is going to lose the attention of our networks as a result.
In Facebook and the Age of Curation Through Unsharing on TechCrunch, Josh Constine argues:
“we’ll need to learn to filter out the noise in reverse, opting out when we don’t want to share instead of opting in when we do.”
I think he’s dreaming…it flies in the face of Clay Shirky’s argument about Information Overload…that it’s really “filter failure.”
So, more noise and less signal is one result, but I think we’re also looking at the potential for brands to damage themselves in the long-term through “opt-out” social sharing.
If the Washington Post knows that ANY time I read ANYTHING on their site, it gets automatically distributed to my network, they are going to default to the lowest common denominator..headlines that make me click, like “sex,” all in the name of eyeballs and clicks.
Sure, that will work for the short-term.
But as I start to lose the valuable attention of my audience (when you see that the articles I am clicking on really don’t have much value aside from a catch headline), you’ll start ignoring me wholesale…you’ll block my status updates and you’ll lose trust in my ability to share only the best content.
OR…I’ll stop using their app because I don’t want you to either know everything I click on OR I’m not willing to sacrifice the relationship I have with you as a trusted curator of content.
And either way…the Washington Post (I’m just picking on them) will be worse off.
- They will sacrifice a relationship with me….and lose the Lifetime Value of the relationship.
- They won’t get the benefit of my Word of Mouth to you.
By seeking to automatically engage browsers as Raving Fans and having them spread the word for them without really asking on a case-by-case basis, I think you’re running right up (and probably over) the line of Permission that is the foundation of solid social marketing.
I don’t know, but that’s my gut reaction and since I don’t know, I look to you and others to help me figure it out.
For starters, I am turning this idea over to Aliza Sherman (and her worthy blog) with whom I intend to volley the concept back and forth.
Aliza…it’s all yours.